The man in charge of Apple Pay explains how it’ll work with the Apple Watch

As part of the Apple Watch’s unveiling in September, Apple said
the watch would take advantage of
Apple Pay, the company’s solution for secure contactless
payments via the iPhone, but didn’t offer many details beyond
that.

But
thanks to CNET, which caught up with Apple’s VP of software
Eddy Cue, we have a much better idea of how the Apple Watch and
Apple Pay will work together.

On the iPhone, Apple Pay works when you hold
your iPhone 6 to a specialized near-field communication (NFC)
pad, choose your credit card from the Passbook application, and
hold your finger on the Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

The Apple Watch also has an NFC chip like the
iPhone 6, but since the Watch lacks a Touch ID fingerprint
sensor, users have to either a) enter a password on the watch, or
b) touch the fingerprint sensor on their phone while wearing the
Watch.

Thankfully, you won’t need to input a password
or use Touch ID every single time you want to use Apple Pay on
the Apple Watch: After you’ve entered the password once, you’ll
be able to make payments so long as the Apple Watch stays on your
wrist. But, once you take Apple Watch off your wrist, you’ll need
to pair your smartphone with your watch when you put it back on
again, either by entering a physical password or using Touch ID
on the phone.

Here’s Cue:

You don’t have to authenticate on the phone.
Your watch has to be unlocked, and your phone can unlock your
watch. If I took my watch off and gave it to you, it would know
and no longer work. If I wanted to pay right now, I could pay
with the watch and not have to take the phone out of my
pocket.

Cue says there will be a stronger Apple Pay
security setting available, which would require a password for
every payment made through Apple Watch, “but you normally won’t
have to,” he says.

Luckily for owners of older iPhones, Apple Pay
will still work on the Watch with those devices. Cue says all
you’ll need to do is type in a passcode on the watch or iPhone
while wearing the Watch, and it’ll unlock the device. This will
work for the iPhone 5, 5C, and 5S, as well as the 6 and 6
Plus.

Apple will unveil more details about the Apple
Watch at its media event on Monday.